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The Department of Justice was quick out of the gate this morning to deny that fired FBI Director James Comey requested more money and personnel for his investigation of Russian election interference and possible Trump campaign collusion with that interference. Here’s the New York Times report on what they learned:
Days before he was fired, James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, asked the Justice Department for a significant increase in money and personnel for the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election, according to three congressional officials who were briefed on his request.
Note the sourcing: three congressional officials who were briefed on it. Comey is said to have requested those resources last week from Rod Rosenstein, the very person whose memo, dated yesterday, led to his firing on the same day.
Over in the Justice Department, though, Jeff Session’s Director of Public Affairs Sarah Flores isn’t having any of it. She denied the reports, claiming she spoke directly with Rosenstein about them. (Because this is the Trump administration, she or reporters or both made a right hash of it, with reporters claiming she denied Comey asked for “money” but allowed he asked for “resources” before she and another spokesman popped up to deny both claims outright.
What’s going on? If you have to put money down on either Jeff Session’s Department of Justice—given that Sessions is the person who recommended to Trump he fire Comey—or three anonymous “congressional officials,” you’re going to have to go with the anonymous congressional tipsters. The Department of Justice is, after all, the very agency compromised by the bizarre firing. It’s all but implausible Comey would not have asked for such resources—and MSNBC correspondent Pete Williams says that members of Congress themselves confirmed that Comey had made the request.
This should be a damn easy thing to check out. There will be plenty of career officials working in the FBI who know whether or not the FBI has been needing an extra allocation of resources. Comey himself could testify. Rosenstein could be summoned to testify. And because the contradiction points to somebody, somewhere, lying about and therefore interfering with the investigation into both Russia and the Trump campaign it carries more than a whiff of cover-up.
If the Justice Department has to walk back their blanket denial that Comey was fired soon after asking for an expansion of the Russia probe—as in, if it turns out to be a lie—it’s going to be the end of more than a few careers. But the Republican refusal to launch an independent investigation into Russia-Trump links, long an episode of bitter party-first partisanship, is now in the wake of the Comey firing an implausible stance. They’ve been slow-walking their own investigation with no dedicated staff and open hostility to calling witnesses; blocking an independent effort as well goes beyond partisanship and well into the realm of intentional collusion.